‘Anti-Romeo’ squads in India’s largest state: protecting women or targeting Muslims?
- Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has revived the state’s controversial police squads supposedly aimed at stopping sexual harassment in the street
- But activists say the hardline Hindu nationalist’s move encourages vigilantism – and point to his history of victimising Muslims with claims of ‘Love Jihad’
Indian schoolteacher Raees Khan was sitting on a bench waiting for his wife to finish shopping when police officers descended on him last week.
“They started interrogating me. I showed them my ID, still they frisked me like a criminal. Thankfully, my wife arrived else things would have gotten out of hand,” the 31-year-old said.
Khan is among the many men in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh who have been targeted by “anti-Romeo squads”, crack teams of police officers deployed in public spaces around girls’ colleges and schools, shopping centres, markets, parks, bus stops and railway stations. They are tasked with arresting “Romeos” who engage in “Eve teasing” – Indian euphemisms for sexual predators and sexual harassment, respectively.
These squads were recently revived after first being deployed in 2017 by Uttar Pradesh’s firebrand chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who is known for espousing a brand of hardline Hindu nationalism and won re-election last month.
Women in India have long been sexually harassed in public and some of the most egregious offenders can be found in Uttar Pradesh, home to about one-seventh of the country’s population.
Of the 31,000 complaints of crimes committed against women in the country last year, about half (15,828) were from the state, according to a report by the National Commission for Women, a constitutional body that advises the government on policy matters. The complaints included cases of molestation, rape, attempted rape and cybercrimes, as well as reports of police apathy towards victims.